Kip Austin Hinton

Congratulations to Jared Kushner for getting the federal government to cover a well-deserved $800 million loan! This is such a feel-good story, showing our meritocracy at work: As a child, Jared's family ran a small business of owning 25,000 apartment units. They barely scraped by on less than $100 million income per year. The Kushners were forced to live off of government assistance, via the rent received from their low-income tenants. When it was time to apply for college, Jared didn't have the advantages of other applicants. For example, he wasn't a great student, his GPA was low, and he got a bad score on the SAT. It was only by a stroke of luck that Jared's dad Charles cobbled together a $2.5 million donation to Harvard. Just in time to get him a spot.  Yet even with a Harvard degree and Ivy League connections, poor Jared didn't find anyone willing to hire him! Except for his dad. So, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps and took an entry-level positio

Yes, many of us white people do remain silent. We don't think of ourselves as racist. And we prefer not to think about our government herding 80,000 impoverished men, women and children into internment camps or crowded shanties without soap or medical care. But when it comes down to it, many of us value law and order more than we value human lives. But then it turns out that U.S. laws actually support the rights of the refugees. And it turns out that requesting asylum is completely legal. Still, isn't it better to just blindly obey what our government says? I mean, I don't endorse 100% of the administration's policies, but what am I supposed to do? Fight for change? Protect innocent victims? Even if Border Patrol and ICE are not following the law, surely they have my best interests in mind. Right? It's not like they're violating the constitution to oppress my own (white) family. BP and ICE are government, so just obey their orders! What's so hard about t